Jaylen Brown was not entirely pleased despite his team advancing to the Eastern Conference Finals on Sunday.
The Boston Celtics star Brown was involved in an incident during the second quarter of his team’s Game 7 victory over the Philadelphia 76ers. As Brown was trying to run up the floor for a fast break opportunity, 76ers swingman Georges Niang, who wasn’t even in the game at the time and was sitting on the bench, grabbed onto Brown’s leg to impede his progress. Brown reacted angrily to Niang’s dirty move, and the two players were ultimately hit with double technical fouls.
You can see video of the incident here.
After the game, which Boston won in a 112-88 blowout, Brown complained about the way the officials handled the Niang incident. More specifically, Brown called out infamous referee Scott Foster, the crew chief who was responsible for handing out the double Ts.
“If I didn’t do anything, they probably would have played on,” said Brown, per Jay King of The Athletic. “And here comes Scott Foster.”
Brown probably has a point there. That was a bush-league move by a player who was not even on the floor in Niang. You’d think the NBA would want to crack down hard on that kind of unsportsmanlike rubbish. Instead however, Brown was handed a technical for his reaction (with the explanation being given that he had supposedly taunted the 76ers bench).
That removed a one-shot technical advantage for Boston (since the Brown T cancelled out the Niang T) and sent a bad message to future offenders — if you can bait a player into a reaction with a dirty move, you might be able to get him called for a T (and maybe even thrown out of the game if he already has a technical foul).
Even if Brown was right though, he is still playing a dangerous game here. Foster has already faced many accusations (including in the recent past) of biased refereeing. If Foster ends up working any of the Celtics’ upcoming conference finals games against the Miami Heat, those comments could come back to bite Brown.
